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Germany

Afghanistan: Germans Get 10 More Years

German soldiers will have to stay in Afghanistan at least for another 10 years, their commanding officer said in an article published on Friday. "For the German army, Afghanistan will have a time limit, but it will be at least ten years," General Hans-Christoph Ammon told
Die Welt newspaper. With up to 2,200 troops, Germany contributes 20 percent of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) which is helping to rebuild the war-ravaged country. German soldiers are based in the Afghan capital Kabul and with so-called provincial reconstruction teams in and around the northern cities of Kunduz and Faizabad. The German parliament agreed last month to extend the troops' mandate by another year and said it hoped to raise numbers to 3,000. Ammon said he hoped the increased troop numbers would give his soldiers more freedom to move around the country and would allow him to reinforce the German presence in Faizabad and deploy troops in Mazar-i-Sharif in the north.